's Best of 2001
Like anything newsworthy, miracles of medicine and technology inevitably make their way out of the headlines and become the stuff of fiction. In recent years readers have been absorbed by media accounts of a transplanted hand, an experiment that ultimately ended in amputation. Medical ethicists reason that a hand, unlike a heart or a liver--essential organs conveniently housed out of sight--is in full view and one of a pair, arguably dispensable. In his 10th novel, however, John Irving undertakes to imagine just such a transplant, which involves a donor, a recipient, a surgeon, a particular Green Bay Packer fan, and the remarkable left hand that brings them together.

Television reporter Patrick Wallingford becomes a story himself when he loses his hand to a caged lion while in India covering a circus. The moment is captured live on film, and Patrick (who wears a "perpetual but dismaying smile--the look of someone who knows he's met you before but can't recall the exact occasion") is henceforth known as the lion guy. Before long, plans are made to equip Patrick with a new hand. Doctor Nicholas M. Zajac, superstar surgeon, indefatigable dog-poop scooper, runner, and part-time father, is poised to perform the operation. But the donor--or rather the widow of the donor--has a few stipulations. Doris Clausen wants to meet the one-handed reporter before the procedure, and insists on visitation rights afterward. Irving weaves these characters and a panoply of others together in a smart, funny, readable narrative. Often farcical, The Fourth Hand is ultimately something more: a tender chronicle of the redemptive power of love. --Victoria Jenkins


From Publishers Weekly
As the world watches, handsome TV journalist Patrick Wallingford, who is obsessed with minutely described one-night stands, has his hand eaten by a lion at the Gnesh Circus. (The gnesh is an Indian symbol of new beginnings). Viewer Doris and her husband Otto are obsessed with the Green Bay Packers and with having a child. Doris cajoles Otto into willing his left hand to Patrick and surprise! Otto soon (accidentally?) kills himself. Famous hand surgeon Nicholas Zajak is, for his part, obsessed with dog feces also described in endless detail which he scoops up with his old lacrosse stick and hurls at rowers on the Charles River. Zajak attaches Otto's hand to Patrick, and Doris demands visitation rights with Otto's hand, as well as with Patrick's child-producing equipment. Though their motivations remain unclear, all three characters are redeemed by their newfound obsessions with winning the love of their sons. Culp's clear, pleasant, middle-range reading voice, appropriately ironic tone and fun, exaggerated Boston accents are easy on the ears. Simultaneous release with Random House hardcover (Forecasts, June 25). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The author's tenth novel charts events and emotions in the life of a newscaster whose fame skyrockets when his left hand is eaten by a lion on camera. When the "widow" of a transplant hand accompanies the appendage to meet the handsome amputee, the determined woman more or less coerces him into sex and conceives the child she's longed for. What follows is a mostly enjoyable trip, abundant in the quirks and themes familiar to Irving's legion of fans: scatological humor, women's rights activism, the rewarding stress of fatherhood, sports metaphors, circuses, and the chronic normality of eccentricities. Irving's worlds are ludicrous in the most appealing way and expertly sentimental at the same time, and his approachable language can be both musical and magical. But here, the promising fiction takes a sharp right turn to autopsy the real-life tragedies of the JFK Jr. and Egypt Air plane crashes Tom Wolfe-type reportage that we certainly don't look for from Irving. Perhaps more disappointing is that the protagonist is motivated primarily by shockingly unoriginal doubts about and eventual disdain for the news media's morbid coverage of world events. Irving's fiction is often moral in its own way, but the moral has never come so close to obscuring the narrative as in this book. The author's magic rules the day, but recent history plays too large a role here to make this the fiction for which he'll be remembered.- Doug McClemont, New York Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Die-hard fans of John Irving, especially those who share his taste for the grotesque and for irony as broad as a barn, may find much to like in this fable about a shallow, passive newscaster named Patrick Wallingford who covers disasters and then becomes one himself when a lion bites his hand off. Wallingford is alleged to be irresistible to women; a young widow in Wisconsin is alleged to want Wallingford to father a baby upon her and then receive her husband's transplanted hand, to which she will then expect visitation rights. If Irving ever aspired to subtlety or true comedy he no longer does, but this is vintage Irving, and at least the performance by Jason Culp is unusually appealing, except for his unfortunate way with a Boston accent. B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Irving is compulsively readable in spite of his pedestrian social commentary and his bossy habit of telling the reader what his characters are all about rather than letting them reveal their inner selves. His hapless hero, the overly handsome Patrick Wallingford, a New York television reporter for an all-news station specializing in bizarre disasters, beds any woman who flirts with him and doesn't care if his wife knows or not. Such fecklessness begs for retribution, and Patrick's is as surreal as it is brutal. Irving revisits the setting he so enjoyed in A Son of the Circus (1994) by sending Patrick to India to cover a story about a trapeze artist whose husband died trying to catch her as she plunged to the earth, the first and most literal of a series of man-crushing females. A woman even causes the confusion that results in Patrick losing his left hand to a cageful of hungry circus lions. Much subdued, he decides to get a hand transplant. Enter a very peculiar surgeon named Sajac, who is obsessed with dog poop, his son, and E. B. White's children's books, Stuart Little and Charlotte's Web. These become the guiding texts for Patrick's slow acquisition of a soul, a process stimulated by a Green Bay Packers fanatic, Doris Clausen, who offers a deal: she'll give Patrick her dead husband's left hand if he'll give her a baby. This is classic Irving: extreme medical procedures, missing body parts, and a surfeit of sex. But his condemnation of the media for such excesses as the shameless orgy over the death of JFK Jr. is right-on, and for all its machismo and conflicted feelings about women, this is one crazy but sweet little love story. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“A RICH AND DEEPLY MOVING TALE . . . Vintage Irving: a story of two very disparate people, and the strange and unexpected ways we grow . . . Irving’s novels are perceptive and precise reflections of the world around us.”
–The Washington Post Book World

“A BLEND OF SEXUAL FARCE, JOURNALISTIC SATIRE, AND TENDER LOVE STORY . . . From what at first seems bizarre, Irving builds the best kind of love story: an improbable one. Wallingford gets more than a transplanted hand; he begins to find his soul.”
–USA Today

“A RIVETING ENTERTAINMENT AND CERTAINLY ONE OF THE FUNNIEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR. The authoritative control of Irving’s storytelling has never been more impressive. . . . The delighted reader is powerless to look away.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

“[A] THOROUGHLY SATISFYING LITERARY EXPERIENCE . . . Irving’s most compassionate and redemptive [novel] to date . . . [His] mastery of characterization is unequaled in American novelists of the day.”
–St. Louis Post Dispatch

“A BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF LOVE.”
–The Denver Post


From the Trade Paperback edition.


Review
?A RICH AND DEEPLY MOVING TALE . . . Vintage Irving: a story of two very disparate people, and the strange and unexpected ways we grow . . . Irving?s novels are perceptive and precise reflections of the world around us.?
?The Washington Post Book World

?A BLEND OF SEXUAL FARCE, JOURNALISTIC SATIRE, AND TENDER LOVE STORY . . . From what at first seems bizarre, Irving builds the best kind of love story: an improbable one. Wallingford gets more than a transplanted hand; he begins to find his soul.?
?USA Today

?A RIVETING ENTERTAINMENT AND CERTAINLY ONE OF THE FUNNIEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR. The authoritative control of Irving?s storytelling has never been more impressive. . . . The delighted reader is powerless to look away.?
?Chicago Sun-Times

?[A] THOROUGHLY SATISFYING LITERARY EXPERIENCE . . . Irving?s most compassionate and redemptive [novel] to date . . . [His] mastery of characterization is unequaled in American novelists of the day.?
?St. Louis Post Dispatch

?A BEAUTIFUL STORY ABOUT THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF LOVE.?
?The Denver Post


From the Trade Paperback edition.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Irving fans might be surprised by this follow-up to the hugely successful A Widow for One Year. It's short! Weighing in at just over 300 pages, The Fourth Hand is the author's leanest novel in 25 years. Gone are the in-depth, Dickensian (and sometimes bombastic) character studies that endeared T. S. Garp and Owen Meany to millions of readers. Is this a good thing? Yes and no. What this novel lacks in character development, Irving more than makes up for in a bizarre, farcical, razor-sharp narrative that is, more often than not, wet-your-pants funny.

Patrick Wallingford is an obscenely good-looking television journalist whose biggest problem in the world is that women can't stop falling in love with him (except his wife, who has fallen deeply out of love with him). While he's on assignment in India, covering the death of a trapeze artist's husband at the Great Ganesh Circus, Patrick's hand is chomped off by a hungry lion. Millions of people witness this horrifying event, and Patrick becomes a worldwide object of pity (which helps him bed more women than he ever thought possible). Years later, he finds himself a candidate for a risky hand transplant operation. Enter Boston surgeon Dr. Nicholas Zajac, a brilliant hand specialist who has a penchant for hurling dog turds at unsuspecting rowers on the Charles River, and Doris Clausen, a Wisconsin widow who wants to give Patrick her husband's hand -- for a price. What happens when these baroque worlds collide is an immensely readable tale that runs the gamut of human emotions.

In John Irving's novels, truth resides not in beauty but in the absurd. His characters are repeatedly tested under extreme and, at times, grotesque physical and emotional conditions, yet he never throws them into a situation they can't handle. Though the characters are not as well drawn here, as in, say, The Cider House Rules, their struggle to understand themselves in a world imbued with violence is no less powerful. Though perhaps a minor work in Irving's oeuvre, The Fourth Hand is a major story about the redemptive power of love and the all-too-human desire for connection. (Stephen Bloom)

ANNOTATION

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: "How can anyone identify a dream of the future?" The answer: "Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: "How can anyone identify a dream of the future?" The answer: "Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love."

While reporting a story from India, a New York television journalist has his left hand eaten by a lion; millions of TV viewers witness the accident. In Boston, a renowned hand surgeon awaits the opportunity to perform the nation's first hand transplant; meanwhile, in the distracting aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, the surgeon is seduced by his housekeeper. A married woman in Wisconsin wants to give the one-handed reporter her husband's left hand - that is, after her husband dies. But the husband is alive, relatively young, and healthy.

SYNOPSIS

The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: "How can anyone identify a dream of the future?" The answer: "Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love."

FROM THE CRITICS

Chris Bohjalian - Washington Post Book World

...a rich and deeply moving tale, and (in the best sense) vintage John Irving: a story of two very disparate people, and the strange and unexpected ways we may grow.

Publishers Weekly

As the world watches, handsome TV journalist Patrick Wallingford, who is obsessed with minutely described one-night stands, has his hand eaten by a lion at the Gnesh Circus. (The gnesh is an Indian symbol of new beginnings). Viewer Doris and her husband Otto are obsessed with the Green Bay Packers and with having a child. Doris cajoles Otto into willing his left hand to Patrick and surprise! Otto soon (accidentally?) kills himself. Famous hand surgeon Nicholas Zajak is, for his part, obsessed with dog feces also described in endless detail which he scoops up with his old lacrosse stick and hurls at rowers on the Charles River. Zajak attaches Otto's hand to Patrick, and Doris demands visitation rights with Otto's hand, as well as with Patrick's child-producing equipment. Though their motivations remain unclear, all three characters are redeemed by their newfound obsessions with winning the love of their sons. Culp's clear, pleasant, middle-range reading voice, appropriately ironic tone and fun, exaggerated Boston accents are easy on the ears. Simultaneous release with Random House hardcover (Forecasts, June 25). (July) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Die-hard fans of John Irving, especially those who share his taste for the grotesque and for irony as broad as a barn, may find much to like in this fable about a shallow, passive newscaster named Patrick Wallingford who covers disasters and then becomes one himself when a lion bites his hand off. Wallingford is alleged to be irresistible to women; a young widow in Wisconsin is alleged to want Wallingford to father a baby upon her and then receive her husband's transplanted hand, to which she will then expect visitation rights. If Irving ever aspired to subtlety or true comedy he no longer does, but this is vintage Irving, and at least the performance by Jason Culp is unusually appealing, except for his unfortunate way with a Boston accent. B.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews